Trump-Brand Morality

        Election day in the US was not exactly what I expected.  Donald Trump, a convicted felon who led a violent attempt to invade Congress and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, was swept back into office with a comfortable margin.  The entire federal government will likely be controlled by the party utterly devoted to Trump.  While Kamala Harris ran a very good campaign, it is clear there are larger systematic forces at work that are even more concerning.  Even if Donald Trump does not move forward with all of the terrible ideas he proposed on the campaign, that he has won by such a wave shows a dangerous undercurrent in our country.  For the sake of all the world, I dearly hope this is simply a result of the unusual magnetism of Trump and not a greater trend towards three primary ideals.

        The first potential issue is the state of our information sector and the fractious nature of media.  This is a difficult issue to speak on because the entire premise of the decision made on election day is only truly a measurable one if we were all operating from the same set of information.  If you ask two people how they communicate with their family, but one does not know phones exist, it really isn’t a good way to understand what the average person uses for communication.  The same could be said for the electorate of the United States.  It is not only that our media diets are so fractured over several mediums, but also that the quality and level of information is utterly out of balance.  Our fellow citizens are operating out of such disparate environments, we likely never have a productive conversation of substance because we cannot agree on a common set of facts.  This leads to an utter retrenchment of ideas to the simple knee-jerk reactions of an uneducated populace and any leader who can feed into that lack of information.  The GOP’s unwavering focus on non-existent culture war issues is an example of this kind of low-information political movements.  With the focus on things that do not matter, it is also a complete waste of time for the people and the country, who have real problems and need real solutions.  This is the most tangible issue in this post, the others are more moral beliefs that I fear have been changed and enabled by Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

        The second is a seeming embrace of the attitude that the ends justify the means.  While this saying is one that is often thrown around, it is important to understand it in the context of a government.  World peace is something that is desirable and achievable in several ways.  One way is for the US to drop nuclear bombs on every other country on the planet.  That would achieve world peace, by destroying every other current and potential enemy of the US.  Is that end desirable and usher in a new era of American dominance of the world?  Yes, it would.  But those means are fundamentally not worth it, achieving peace over a pile of cinders.  It is even more important when the measurement of success is not as black and while as dead or alive, but the successful persuasion of hearts and minds.  Do we want this to be the way our country solves problems?  Do we want to solve the housing shortage by rounding up and deporting millions of people?  Do we want to improve the fiscal budget by slashing everything and them see how much people suffer?  Do we want to improve the American economy by placing a 50% tariff on every imported good, likely inducing a recession, just because it is an easy executive policy?  Do we want to enjoy slightly lower gas costs by destroying the environment?  Do we want to have hundreds of children die from preventable diseases just so we can say on social media that we didn’t get vaccinated?  The proposals of the upcoming Trump Administration are quick-fix band aids not based on any sound policy, just the childish foot stomp of someone demanding power.  And the voters seem to be ok with the violence, incompetence, simplicity, and cruelty, if it means a problem might be fixed.

        Lastly, the cruelty.  Watching a Trump rally is always quite the ordeal.  There are moments of levity, entertainment, and outrageous spectacle.  But that also comes with a healthy mixture of dangerous rhetoric, nativism, and outright racism and sexism.  All the while, the crowd is laughing at every bit.  It is not simply an entertained laugh, it is the cruel, nagging roar only heard from the posse of a school yard bully.  During the shutdown, I wrote about the concerning trend among Republican leaders of the causal attitude towards the suffering of their fellow Americans.  They complete normalization of being ok with bad things happening in the country, as long as they weren’t happening to you.  I am afraid that attitude has become normalized and rewarded with the reelection of Donald Trump.  That Trump’s policies will hurt the country, its citizens, businesses, and global order is irrelevant, as long as he is also hurting the people you don’t like, then it’s all worth it.  As his administration took children away from their parents as they tried to cross the boarder, or he lied to the country about the severity of COVID, cruelty has now been translated to “strength” while compassion and goodwill has been translated to “weak.” 

        I do not think all of the worst proposals will be enacted by the new Trump Administration, if only because they are so outlandish it becomes in itself, unlikely.  But the attitudinal shifts are more likely to occur and more difficult to reverse, and ultimately more damaging to the country.  Each time there is a disaster occurring in the world, Americans are almost always the greatest source of donations.  Not the government, regular people donating to the cause.  We were a shining city on a hill, a place where one could chance the American dream and achieve something, no matter their color or creed.  I don’t want this country that I love to morph into a mere group of individuals, hoarding their resources and constantly looking over their shoulder.  But this election has shown we have made peace with some form of that attitude.  The next four years will likely be difficult, with all three branches of government at the beck and call of a man fundamentally unfit to lead.  He will be surrounded by others pursuing their own cruel agendas or operating in a fundamentally misguided way.  There are now less rules holding back the Executive Branch than there were during his first term as President.  And his stated plans are far more extreme and detailed than the first time.  We cannot lose our soul as a nation to this small blip on the radar, but we are closer than ever before.  Think of your fellow American, and think of the world as we stride into the future.  We are not enemies and we are not going anywhere. 

#FitzFile